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@flab Do you have any experimental sources for that? The significantly higher energy woukd seem to offset that, but im only speculating.
You want a certain amount of penetration, enough to inflict a good wound channel, but *too* much poses a danger to anything behind your target. In a perfect scenario, the round penetrates your target completely and not one inch further. A higher speed, narrower projectile is more likely to go beyond that point than a broader one, regardless of total energy.
@flab well no, if we are talking theory then its a bit more complicated than that...
More velocity for the same weight projectile will obviously be more penetrating, but thats because it has more energy. But a higher velocity projectile at the same energy (so lighter) will be less penetrating. A 9mm is faster but has less energy thus shoukd be less penetrating in theory.
Let me try to find some ballistic gel tests on this to see if i can find a good real world answer though. Theory isnt always correct.
Ok so watched a few videos and, as expected, the actual answer is nuanced.
When shooting ballistic gel with no MDF, and using a FMJ bullet, then the 9mm indeed does have noticably more penetration. However if you are in a situation where you dont want deep penetration then you would be using hollow point...
When shooting hollow point on ballistic gel without MDF then 9mm and 0.45 ACP has exactly the same penetration. I t should be noted the 0.45 ACP while having the same penetration also did more damage to the gel in terms of cavity size... So in this particular test the .45 is superior as it has more stopping power for the same penetration.
When using MDF in front of the ballistic gel, however, we find the .45 ACP is significantly more penetrating than the 9mm.
so would seem that while the FMJ certainly gave results consistent with your claim, the more real world scenario of the hollow point in fact was counter to your claim and consistent with mine, that the ACP will be more penetrating than the 9mm.
Source for the hollow point tests:
